A Beginner’s Guide To Climate-Friendly Home Gardening
Most people share a common misconception that gardening in itself is an eco-friendly approach. However, sustainable gardening is a combination of home gardening and eco-friendly approaches.
The beautiful patch of greenery in your backyard surely helps, but you can add a few excellent practices to combat environmental issues on a personal level.
With the temperature increasing every year, it is certainly the time to become more climate-conscious on a personal level.
Climate-friendly home gardening is an excellent approach to creating a beautiful space that also helps the environment in a significant way. Today we will be taking a look at a few basic steps that will help you to get started today.
Regular Home Garden Vs. Climate-Friendly Home Gardening
A regular home garden might look like it is helping the environment but often time it can cause harmful effects on the climate instead. An eco-friendly garden takes, just as the name suggests, eco-friendly approaches to ensure sustainability while reducing the impact on the environment as much as possible.
Regular home gardens often cause a huge amount of water loss because of bad watering practices. Water is a natural resource. Many garden owners use fresh water in their gardens.
While a lot of them use sprinklers or hoses to water their garden, both sprinklers and hoses cause a huge amount of water loss and do not even have any additional benefits. On the other hand, with eco-friendly gardening, you learn to practice reusing and conserving water as much as possible.
Another clear distinction between regular home gardens and climate-friendly gardens is the usage of chemicals and pesticides. Traditional gardening is done with synthetic and toxic chemicals, which are not only terrible for your crops but also for your body. These chemicals ruin the quality of the soil and later ruin the nearest water bodies.
With an eco-friendly approach, you will learn to create a garden where everything is organic and utilize natural resources to eliminate pests easily.
So to simplify, the key distinction between a regular home garden and a climate-friendly home garden is using sustainable approaches and methods to deal with the climate issues we are facing right now. This will essentially help you reduce your carbon footprint drastically.
Why Do You Need Climate-Friendly Home Gardening?
When combating an environmental crisis, our ultimate goal is to reduce our carbon footprint. The climate-friendly home gardening approach helps you achieve just that.
It is a sustainable approach to living. But unlike any other method, you will also benefit from it personally. You can grow your organic produce without any synthetic chemicals.
In addition, you will also be reducing food waste by turning it into compost. Research showed that in the US, around 40% food supply is wasted. All of this food waste is dumped in landfills.
- Help preserve the local ecosystem
- Save lots of money
- Reduce food waste by a significant number
- Learn to reuse and recycle everyday things
- Live a fulfilling life
4 Easy Steps To Start Climate-Friendly Home Gardening
You don’t need fancy equipment or special skills to make a sustainable and climate-friendly garden in your backyard. Or you can do it indoors too! It is all about being mindful of the climate while practicing a sustainable lifestyle. There are so many guides on how to create a climate-friendly home garden on the internet but most can be quite confusing.
If you follow the 4 basic steps mentioned below, you will have no issues creating your sustainable garden.
Step 1: Choose A Variety Of Plants
One of the most common mistakes that can occur during the planning of an eco-friendly garden is not selecting the correct plants. To avoid this, always make sure to pick from a wide array of different types of plants.
A great way to ensure your garden is helping the local ecosystem is by picking native plants. Native plants refer to plants that have always existed in a particular area. Without enough native plants, the local ecosystem becomes imbalanced.
In addition to this, you should also make sure your garden does not have any invasive plants. Because invasive plants are extremely harmful to the native species of plants and hinder their growth.
If you live in an area with extreme weather conditions, then be sure to pick resilient plant species. Drought-resilient plants do not need as much water or maintenance which can contribute to your sustainable gardening practices.
Choosing a wide variety of plants that differ in size allows you to create a more diverse garden. This will also ensure that your garden is becoming a home for pollinators throughout the year.
Step 2: Water Wisely
One of the easiest ways to become more climate-conscious is by preserving water. There are many great ways to both save and preserve water while maintaining a garden successfully.
Harvest Rainwater
If you live in a place with high rainfall, then you can collect rainwater. You can buy a rainwater collector or a water butt to do so. Harvesting rainwater ensures you will be independent of municipal water supply.
In addition, you will also be conserving a huge amount of water.
Rainwater is also great for plants as it contains the ideal pH for plants and is free of chemical treatments. It has more amount of nitrates and oxygens than tap water which promotes healthy growth for your plants.
Reuse Greywater
If you live in an area where it does not rain as much, then you can reuse greywater. Greywater refers to the wastewater that has been used in the kitchen or bathroom.
However, if your greywater is mixed with chemicals like ammonia, then it is better to not use it at all.
The best method to conserve water and reduce water usage is by picking drought-resistant plants. Another great trick is to use organic mulch around the plants. Applying a layer of mulch will retain moisture as well as suppress weeds.
Learn to water properly
When you are practicing sustainable gardening, your watering techniques have to change as well. Once you learn to water wisely, you will be able to save a lot of water without having to starve your plants.
The best time to water your plants is as early as possible. You can water at 6 AM or early in the morning. Watering the plants later in the day becomes less effective due to quick evaporation.
Avoid automatic watering systems as they cause massive amounts of waste wastage. Instead, try to do it yourself if possible.
Step 3: Say No To Pesticides
One of the biggest differences between regular gardening and climate-friendly gardening is the usage of pesticides. Most people use harmful herbicides and pesticides to kill unwanted weeds and pests.
However, it is a terrible practice as the runoff often contaminates the soil and nearest water bodies. Pesticides are also harmful to pollinators which can lead to a negative effect on your garden in the long run.
Instead of turning to harmful chemicals to protect your garden, you can take the help of a few sustainable practices, such as attracting birds in your garden or companion planting.
Utilize Natural Resources
If you want to attract birds to your garden, adding a few bird feeders and water features in your garden is a great idea. Your precious avian guests will take care of invasive pests for you. But be sure to add protective nests over your crops to protect them.
In addition, attracting beneficial bugs like ladybugs will also help you get rid of aphids without having to use any sort of pesticides.
Companion Planting
Another great trick to deal with pests is companion planting. With this technique, you are growing two different plants together that will help each other survive the pests.
There are many combinations, such as tomatoes and chives, peppers and basil, etc.
Tomatoes and chives are staples in our pantry. But did you know that the strong smell of chives can deter aphids and other pests that are harmful to tomatoes? Most importantly, there is no risk of cross-contamination happening as the scent of the chives will not affect the tomatoes at any point.
Basil and pepper another classic combination that works great together. Basil is a great natural pesticide because it will keep spider mites, aphids, and fly species far away from your garden.
Natural pest deterrents such as garlic, spring onions, dill, etc, keep a variety of insects and bugs, like beetles, onion flies, etc, away from your garden.
Step 4: Turn Your Food Waste Into Compost
Creating your compost is essential in eco-friendly gardening. It deals with food waste and helps to keep the garden completely organic. Making your compost also helps you save a lot of money.
With so many benefits, composting takes a significantly small amount of work. All you have to do is save your kitchen scraps and mix them with cardboard and wood stems.
But you cannot use all kitchen scraps to create your compost. Vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, grass clippings, leaves, newspaper, etc. can be added to the compost.
On the other hand, meat, fish, dairy products, oil, etc. should never be used in compost.
The trick to a great and nutrient-dense compost lies in using the perfect ratio between green and brown materials. The golden ratio is roughly three parts brown materials to one part green materials.
This will ensure there is enough nitrogen to break down the brown material and enough carbon to provide energy for the decomposing microbes.
Final Words
Climate-friendly home gardening practices can help you turn your boring backyard into a gorgeous piece of greenery in just a few steps. It will also help you to live a sustainable and more fulfilling life.
